Viewing the Bible with 21st Century Eyes

Differences in World View

Interpreting of the Bible, both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament, begins by recognizing from the very start, that the Bible was not written in the language or with the viewpoint of people living at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Such a patronizing statement is necessary because unless that fact is kept constantly in mind a new look at scripture is not be possible. This is because the principal argument of a religious conservative is always that the Bible is the literal, inerrant word of God: that the words we read, written in modern English, or perhaps in the early 17th century English of the King James Bible, convey to us with precise, literal, exactitude of meaning, God’s will for us.

Depending on the issue, of course, conservatives of different degrees of permissiveness, and one would suspect, self interest, differ on the literalness of their literalism. This should be kept in mind because conservatives of a literal bend are not united on the literal meaning of each and every passage of scripture.

Each era of human history has it own way of viewing the world and deciding what is socially acceptable based on that viewpoint. It is a constant of human nature that each era will revise social acceptance for their own time. Perhaps this social turmoil is due simply to an inherent and perhaps perverse restlessness in human nature. This restlessness is influenced by what each new age believes about nature, both human and otherwise. As a result it is impacted by technology, affluence or lack of it, and the broad or narrow base of education among the people at large. As a general rule, the more conservative a person, the more apt he is to see perversity in human restlessness. The more permissive individual will be less fearful of the change brought about by the restlessness of human nature, and most likely will be part of the restlessness himself. There is also a direct correlation between the degree to which a conservative will suffer a loss of power, wealth, and position as a result of social change.

With this principal in mind, one can readily see the vast chasm that exists between a 21st century world view and that of the ancient civilizations in which the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament were compiled. It is also important to keep in mind not only the difference between modern and Biblical times, but also the differences that developed over the time span separating the most ancient part of the Hebrew scriptures and the most recent parts of the New Testament.

The argument for considering the differences in viewpoint between different eras is not just a simple matter of logical reasoning. Archeological evidence, research in anthropology, comparative religion, linguistics and a diversity of academic fields support and illuminate the changes that distinguish the viewpoints of historical and modern societies.

Another important thing to remember is that even though societies can be separated by time, they can also share many common ideals and principals. This constant in ideals and principals lies at the base of all that is good in humanity, and it is the search to achieve these social and spiritual ideals that believers seek in Holy Scripture.

The Dangers of Literal Interpretation: Discovering how best to grow towards eternal truth and goodness often requires peeling away the multi-layered obscurity of ancient society that hides the truth. Often this ‘peeling away’ requires challenging the literal words themselves in order to understand their truth in a modern context. This process is anathema to a literalist, at least when dealing with those issues that threaten his personal happiness, power, or position. Conservatives sometimes term this sort of interpretation “spiritualizing scripture” although the term, which they use with derisive intent, does violence to any traditional religious doctrine of “Spirit.”

When the conservative resists a discovery of real truth in scripture, he plants at least two land minds in the path towards it. First, his attempt to protect his own position in society keeps him in error with respect to the will of God. This is especially serious if he does so in defiance of what his reason tells him about God’s ongoing revelation through science and human intellect. The conservative’s resistance also presents a far graver danger in that he reinforces and keeps in place barriers that deny access to God for others. Those whom society keeps on its margins, but who seek God, might find Him if the minefield of literalism were cleared away. Tragically the religious conservative, in maintaining barriers that his intellect should tell him ought not to exist, thwarts the spread of the very Gospel which the conservative claims to love and seeks to proclaim.

Divisions in Western Christianity: After the great schism between the east and west in 1053, Christianity was united under Papal dominance until the late fifteenth century when that unity came apart. In the late sixteenth-century Anglican theologian, Richard Hooker, posited at about the same time the Pope excommunicated the Church of England (Anglicans) during the reign of Elizabeth I, that truth in Holy Scripture could only be discovered through a process that combined Reason, Tradition, and Scripture.

Hooker’s position was in opposition not only to the Roman Catholic Church, but to most of the Protestant reformers as well. The Roman Catholic position held that only those authorized by the Church could interpret the meaning of scripture. Further, ordinary people were forbidden even to read the words of scripture in the language of their everyday lives. According to Roman Catholic Doctrine, only the Church, governed and control by Christ’s vicar on earth, the Pope, was competent to discern God’s will for the world and his people. The restlessness of human nature at the time resisted the totalitarian governance of the church because the Roman Church had become corrupt. Those, like Martin Luther, who as a priest, knew and read scripture, raised issues with the authority of the church based on what he perceived to be the will of God through his reading of the Bible. The rest is history, as the saying goes.

Challenging the authority of the Papacy took at least two major forms: totally protestant, which claimed that only the words of Scripture had authority: Sola Scriptura, to use the Latin term. This view accepted no authority in the ancient practices of the Church. Unless a doctrine or belief was explicitly stated in scripture, it was corrupt. Although this position might be understandable given the absolutist mentality of society at the time, combined with a great deal of ignorance of biblical and church history, it had the result of abandoning very important elements of the ancient Christian faith. On the European continent, this literalist Christianity developed into an extremely legalistic, judgmental, and forbidding faith derived in great part from a one-sided
reading of the Hebrew prophets and the angry, vengeful God they describe. Its very absolutist positions, however, were very attractive to a plague-ridden, poor, and unenlightened populace who were just emerging from the intellectual darkness of the Middle Ages.

Reformers in other places, particularly the Swedish expression of Lutheranism and those in England took a different course. It is necessary to describe this process in England in order to understand the positions taken in this article. Henry VIII’s problems over divorce and the resulting fight with the Papacy are well know and are the major initial cause of England’s break with Rome. Henry, however, is by no means responsible for the final breach under Elizabeth I in 1585. Mary Tutor return the Church of England to papal obedience when she became queen at the death of her half-brother Edward VI. When Mary died in 1558 and Elizabeth ascended to the throne, she inherited a kingdom dangerously divided between the “new Protestant religion” of
continental Europe and the “Old Religion”, the Roman Catholic Church. In an astute decision which was undoubtedly based on political necessity more than on religious conviction, she established the Church of England as neither Protestant nor Catholic, but under her own person as Head of the Church. This resulted in Papal excommunication of Elizabeth and all adherents to this ‘new religion’ in 1585.

Elizabeth’s newly reformed Church of England retained most of the ancient Christian traditions abandoned by the Continental reformers. Following the protestant reformers, the Church of England allowed clergy to marry, but more importantly the church retained the sacraments, or divine channels of God’s Grace made available through the institution of the Church. In the reformed Anglican catholic version, the sacraments were retained in two forms. The first, influenced by the new respect for the Bible as source of authority are termed “dominical,” that is the two established by Jesus Christ, which are Baptism and Holy Communion.

The five other sacraments are termed ‘sacramental in nature’ and are believed to be ordained by the Holy Spirit after the text of the Bible was established by canon. These five are confirmation (the adult affirmation of baptismal vows) ordination (the making of the three-tiered ministry, deacons, priests, and bishops). marriage, penitence (confession), and unction (anointing for healing.)

The other ancient catholic traditions having to do with vestments, ceremonial, the decoration and embellishment of churches and cathedrals, were a battleground within the Anglican Communion for centuries. The way in which this conflict was resolved is important not only to understanding the genius of Anglicanism, but also in recognizing that disagreement among Christians is not only possible, but can lead ultimately to finding unity in truth, however temporary that peace may be. Elizabeth I, as head of the Church of England, made very few demands in terms of belief. What she did require was that her subjects worship together using the Book of Common Prayer, the essential, defining liturgical document that unites the diversity among all the separate independent Anglican Churches throughout the world. Each of these owes its beginnings to the Church of England, including the Episcopal Church in the United States.

The important point to remember is that unity within the body of Christ does not demand unity of belief since it can rarely be found even under the most benign of conflicts. The outcome of this common worship gradually removed the initial catholic/protestant divide in the Anglican Communion and (except for the fairly recent conflict over homosexuality and the ordination of women) brought the entirety of the communion to the point were internal differences are minimal and the differences with Roman Catholicism have been reduced primarily to resisting the claim by the Pope to absolute authority in matters of faith and morals, the same position rejected by the Church of England in 1585.

Recent human restlessness in Anglicanism has increased this distance again, however, because of the decision in most parts of the Anglican Communion to ordain women as priests and bishops, and now the decision, at least in the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church in Canada, and in some cases the (mother) Church of England itself, to do away with the ancient anathema towards sexually active homosexuals. A majority of Episcopalians (if not all) have decided to bring homosexuals into the full life of the church, which includes ordination as priests and the consecration of bishops.

Restlessness of the Spirit among members of the Episcopal Church has now resulted in fuller expansion of freedom in Christ. While conservatives bemoan a loss of the moral authority of the Church, and most certainly a perceived loss of their power and influence in the Church, they are in fact retarding the work of the Holy Spirit.

Their response to the present conflict is to threaten separation, in defiance and most certainly ignorance of traditional Anglicanism, the ancient via media or middle way. It is while pursuing this middle way that we remain in communion with each other and await the resolution of our differences, trusting that the Holy Spirit will resolve conflict over the passage of time. This has always been the true, and perhaps uniquely Anglican path to reconciliation. A policy of separation can never remedy difference in belief, and is a most un-Anglican path. Elizabeth I would have had the heads of separatists on a pike.

Joy over the full inclusion of homosexuals in the Church comes at the expense of many who object to the decision. Their pain is regrettable, but there is no reason to grieve their loss. Those who threaten to leave the church are like those southern aristocrats who moved to Mexico after the Civil War trying to regain the lives they lost when their slaves were freed. They are like disgruntled men who objected to giving the vote to women. They are like the racist southerners who abandoned the Democratic Party in the 1960s because of the civil rights movement.

If a homosexual could sustain a lifetime of commitment to the Gospel while being held outside the fold during most of his life, then surely straight Christians can endure the presence of gay people among them as equals. The gain of gay people has cost straight people nothing of value. They can still marry. They can still worship. They can still serve as ordained ministers. They can still participate in the governance of the church. Their threats of separation are clear evidence of spiritual poverty.

The Three-legged Stool: As was mentioned above, the late sixteenth-century Anglican theologian, Richard Hooker, posited that truth in Holy Scripture could only be discovered through a process that combined Reason, Tradition, and Scripture. This is the origin of the ancient Anglican metaphor, the three legged stool. According to Hooker, each of the legs, reason, tradition, and scripture must be present in order to rediscover God’s truth in each succeeding age. In actual fact, this is the position now taken in Biblical interpretation by most non-Roman Catholic Christians, and non-literalist denominations in western Europe and North America. Were it not for the Papal practice of silencing progressive Roman Catholic theologians, it most likely would also be the public position of most of those theologians. A tendency to interpret scripture based on reason, tradition, and scripture exists as a source of conflict and virtual separation among many literalists as well, particularly among educated Southern Baptists and other conservative denominations in the United States.

Christian sects such as the Amish can disdain the modern world and isolate themselves from it, but can not change that world or turn back its unstoppable encroachment on the world they prefer. The tragedy is that they refuse Christ’s command to spread the Gospel to a hurting world by deciding to separate themselves from it. The same must be said of those who refuse to proclaim the Gospel in terms that are understandable in the world as it changes. Their religion is like a bee preserved but lifeless in an amber sarcophagus: like the corpse of Lenin enclosed in glass within the Kremlin walls, relics of a time that has long since passed away and no longer relevant to a living world.

The concept of the three-legged stool is central to the arguments and interpretations that must be made in order to rescue the Christain faith from a Christian version of the Taliban. The great danger to Christianity and religion in general is not in abandoning "traditional" understandings. The greatest danger is that preservation of these understanding will erode the revelance of religion in the modern world and certainly endanger the true mission of religion--providing hope and comfort to those who need it most in an ever-changing world.